Green Evening Sky

Sunday night was interesting, to say the least. William and I went over to my parents’ house accross the street from church to say “hi” for a few minutes before heading home. It started to rain and thunder a bit, so we were going to stay there for a few more minutes to wait it out before heading home.

A couple of minutes into the storm Alana called wondering why we weren’t home yet and asked us to come home (she’s a bit frightened of thunder). So William and I ran accross the street in the pouring rain and thunder, jumped into the car, and drove home. The downpour was intense and it was a bit hard to see, but we got there soon enough. After a couple of minutes at home with Alana and Niamh, the weather got even worse – the sky turned green and the rain and wind were at full force. We were a bit concerned about tornados, given the conditions, and since we don’t have a basement, Alana wanted to go to my parents’ house for better shelter. So, I ran to the car to get it ready and waited for Alana and the kids to jump in the car too.

Sitting in the car and looking at the storm I had to wonder to myself, “so why are we going to drive around in this weather?” But, a few moments later Alana and the kids were in the car and we were off. This time it was even more difficult to drive. The rain was all over the windshield and it seemed like the wipers were rather ineffective. We dodged around all the fallen branches on the roads and arrived at my parents’ house in one piece. I parked the car in one of the branchless locations in the driveway, and we ran into the house.

For the next few minutes we stayed in the basement. When the storm started to clear, we went back upstairs and took a look around. There were chunks of willow all over the yard and the willows behind the house had snapped and broken in many places and were badly mangled. The whole yard looked like a mess of brambles, but with twenty-foot branches instead of small plants. Since the power had gone out, I drove home and back again (clearing some branches off the road along the way) to pick up a power cord so that Dad could hook up the generator and get the sump pumps working to keep the basement from flooding. Once that was done, we took a quick look around the neighborhood to see how much damage was done. The apple tree at the end of the street had been uprooted, my parent’s backyard, as well as their neighbors’ yards were a mess, accross the street, the church’s lawn was covered in branches from one of the trees that had been hit hard, and one of our neighbors had a 40-year old evergreen leaning on his roof. It surely wasn’t as bad as the tornado in ’85, but it was still quite a mess.

Since my brother Matthew is getting married next (not this) weekend, my father wanted the lawn to look nice for visitors and he had been working to make it look presentable. Now it was… less presentable, so Matthew, Hollie and I took Monday off to cut the wood and clean everything up. Ian came from accross the street and helped out as well. Dad already had the day off, so he bought a chainsaw the next day and we set off to work. It was hot and very humid, but in the end we cleared up the main of the back yard filling the front ditch throwing with the small branches, and stacking up three rows of logs. There is still a bit of work to be done out behind one of the trees and in the neighbor’s lot (which my parents have been maintaining), but not too much.

Thankfully no one got hurt that I am aware of (Pastor Evans had quite the ride home, but he’s fine). Our power was back on at 5:30 Monday morning, and my parents got their power back at around 2:00 in the afternoon (or so). The crops have been pushed down quite a bit, but the carrots seem to be perking up a bit again. I’m not sure how the onions are affected, but one of the farmers I talked to said that it would take a fair amount of work to recover from the storm. Hopefully all will go well with the crops in the end.